Prophecy, Position, and Predetermination: The World of the Nuremberg Chronicle

by Cara Bishop

The Nuremberg Chronicle, written by Hartmann Schedel with woodcut illustrations by the Michael Wolgemut workshop, represented and still maintains a monumental position in the history of the printed book as one of the most profoundly illustrated texts of its time. Thousands of years of history manifest in both Schedel’s writing and Wolgemut’s profuse imagery, helping to enrich the burgeoning scholarly community in Germany. The Nuremberg Chronicle concisely depicts and communicates to the public God’s predetermined timeline of events, beginning with Creation and concluding with end times. Through studying the patterns of semiotics and iconography held in its illustrations, this essay discusses certain issues surrounding the book clarifying how the Chronicle conveys the universe’s cosmic order and Scriptural prophecy, synthesizing cosmology with contemporary texts, in order to situate the city of Nuremberg within this order and predict the future fate of the Holy Roman Empire at large.

Printmaking

15th Century

Northern Renaissance

Germany

Woodcut

In
1493, a remarkable and monumental book entered the market,“'for the common
delight’” of all its readers.1 Containing over 1,800 illustrations in its 600 pages, the Nuremberg Chronicle, known
to scholars also by its Latin name Liber Chronicarum and German Die
Schedelsche Weltchronik, continues to fascinate scholars in its reputation
as the most profoundly illustrated printed book of its period.2 In writing about the Nuremberg Chronicle
and studying in detail the unique woodcuts contained in the chapters of the
Second Age and Seventh Age of the world, I hope to elucidate to modern readers
how the Chronicle and its imagery incorporates and reacts to medieval
perceptions of the universe through the means of the scholarly study of
cosmography, and consequently, how this cosmographic knowledge reveals the
apocalyptic anxieties felt by its readers during the time approaching the new
millennium in 1500.

PART
ONE: The Chronicle, Building Its Context,
and the Nature of Its Study

The
incunabulum sprouted from the collaboration between the esteemed Nuremberg
humanist Sebald Schreyer and his relative Sebastian Kammermeister, who wished
to sponsor a book which chronicled the entire history of the world through
seven ages beginning with the Biblical Creation, expanding through the
contemporary fifteenth century era, and ending with the Book of Revelations,
recalling the beginning and finally foreseeing the end of days through a
Western, Christian lens. For supplying
the text, Schreyer and Kammermeister employed Hartmann Schedel, a well-versed
humanist physician hailing from a wealthy and educated Nuremberg family, who
formulated and compiled the text to be printed in Latin.3 Additionally, the patrons enlisted the
workshop of Michael Wolgemut and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff to create
approximately 650 woodcuts to supplement Schedel’s writings.4 Records indicate that Schreyer and
Kammermeister hired the prominent Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger in 1492 to
print 1,500 copies in Latin and 1,000 copies in the
vernacular German, which was to be translated by George Alt from Schedel’s
Latin text.5

The
Nuremberg Chronicle finds itself amongst a long tradition of works
representing the world chronicle genre and the more recent tradition of
illustrated printed books. In perusing
the library of Hartmann Schedel, one comes across several examples of ancient
and more contemporary texts from which he would have drawn inspiration in
writing the Nuremberg Chronicle.6 His interests in ancient chronicles as well
as Christian historiography are exemplified by his possession of mostly
contemporary editions of Boccaccio’s Genealogiae deorum gentilium, the Chronicon
of Bishop Eusebius, Herodotus’ Historiae, Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda
aurea, works by Thomas Aquinas, and Isidore of Seville’s Chronica maius. Worldly interests like geography and
cosmography are represented in the works of Pomponius Mela and Honorius’ Imago mundi. In the library, one finds several precursors
for Schedel’s work on the Chronicle in his possession of the Mainz
publication of Konrad Bote’s Croneken der
Sassen, a heavily illustrated history of Saxon reign; Bernhard von
Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio in terram
sanctam, a similarly illustrated compendium of pilgrimage travels visually
documented in the woodcuts of Erhard Reuwich; and lastly, a publication by
Anton Koberger of Stephan Fridolin’s Schatzbehalter, in which, like the Nuremberg
Chronicle, the Wolgemut workshop provided multiple woodcuts which spread
across full pages, separate from text.While Schedel did not own in his estate a copy of Werner Rolewinck’s Fasciculus
Temporum, an illustrated world chronicle left unfinished, Schedel could have
come in contact with a copy because he lived near the monastery where it was
stored; it is this book and its complex layout which established the precedent
for illustrated world chronicles with integrated images alongside printed text, like
the Chronicle.7 Of all of these world histories to which the
compiler would have had access, none go so far as to include the apocalyptic
last chapter of the New Testament, a notion that sets the Nuremberg
Chronicle apart from its canonical tradition and will contribute to a major
discussion later in this analysis.

In previous scholarship, the
discussion about the actual progenitor of the Chronicle’s premise
remains disputed and grows more distorted with modern speculation8. However, what can be concluded is that the
cultural blossoming of Nuremberg during this time fostered an environment for
scholastic and patrician fraternity.Both Hartmann Schedel and the Chronicle’s primary financier
Sebald Schreyer acted as respected civic officials in Nuremberg, and were involved in humanist
scholarship and discourse. While Schedel
was involved in Nuremberg’s Church of St. Sebald, Schreyer acted as the head of
the church, commissioned the Shrine of St. Sebald by Peter Vischer, and
judging from these actions, must have held his name saint and the patron saint
of Nuremberg, Sebaldus, in high regard.9 Schreyer’s close ties to the city of
Nuremberg justifies the particularly German bias represented in the Chronicle
and could contribute to his desire in sharing this humanistic knowledge as an
attempt to solidify his status within the city as well as Nuremberg’s
participation within the Holy Roman Empire.With his financial prowess and ability to patronize art in various
media, Schreyer uses the Nuremberg Chronicle as a work that represents
Nuremberg, is made for the people of Nuremberg, and details the past, present,
and predetermined future of the city.

­­­ A thorough examination of Schedel’s
own copy of the Chronicle will show
that the book should be considered to be an art object worthy of position in
the art historical canon, rather than simply a cultural artifact of its day. As a whole, this particular copy exhibits the
most exemplary attributes of a luxury consumer item customized for the use of
one individual. Beginning with the exterior,
Schedel’s Chronicle, which is a showpiece in the collection of the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, is bound in pigskin and embossed with
pseudo-arabesque patterning (fig. 1).10

Each hand-colored woodcut shows the intricacy
and delicacy that the artist, or artists, in the workshop would have needed to
enhance the quality and experience of each image. What are most notable about Schedel’s book
are not these ostentatious details, but rather the supplemental materials,
which have been conserved inside the book’s pages. Inside, Schedel includes an announcement,
printed in Latin, advertising the Chronicle to its target audience
(fig. 2).

But nothing like this has
hitherto appeared to increase and heighten the delight of men of learning and
of everyone who has any education at all:the new book of chronicles with its pictures of famous men and cities
which has just been printed at the expense of rich citizens of Nuremberg. Indeed, I venture to promise you, reader, so
great delight in reading it that you will think you are not reading a series of
stories, but looking at them with your own eyes. For you will see there not only portraits of
emperors, popes, philosophers, poets, and other famous men each shown in the
proper dress of his time, but also views of the most famous cities and places
throughout Europe … When you look upon all these histories, deeds, and wise
sayings you will think them all alive.11

Here, the artistic intention
and projected interpretation of the book’s artistic and scholastic merit is
made ostensibly clear through Schedel’s language. Not only does Schedel, on behalf of the
patrons, anticipate the book to be an inimitable source for their immediate
scholarly circle of educated Nuremberg men, but also, to reiterate, “…for the
common delight,” and suggests the engagement of people who have received lower
levels of education.12 Schedel found it important to include the
illustrated aspect of the book in its appeal to prospective readers as well;
for Schedel, the purpose of the woodcut illustrations is not merely to
supplement the text, but to extrapolate from it, and in essence, to provide a
visual transcript of the Chronicle which could stand alone. The images actively participate in engaging
the reader and assisting in his or her understanding and construal of the
text. In combining these notions, the
extent to which each copy could have been individualized per its reader, the
blatant explication of the purpose of the multitudinous images, and the
production in Latin and the vernacular show not only that the book was for the
use of the affluent, but also for the lesser educated, but by no means lower
class, citizen who could gain knowledge by learning through images.

While Schedel’s own copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle ascertains in its
sumptuousness the intent of the book’s reading as an art object and the extent
by which a utilitarian object like a book can function as a precious object of
the highest quality, this copy remains an anomaly out of the total 2,500 copies produced in the first edition of 1493; however, its
excellence shall not be ignored. This is
to say that, despite the Schedel Chronicle’s
uniqueness, all other copies produced hold the same gravity as objects of art
to be admired evidenced by the explicit preliminary contract agreed upon
between Schreyer and Kammermeister and the workshop of Wolgemut and
Pleydenwurff. Before progressing any
further in regard to the artistic production of the illustrations, one must
nuance the system of producing these woodcuts.Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff headed an expansive workshop that specialized
in paintings and sculpture. Because of
typical workshop practices in the late fifteenth century, it is generally
accepted that Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff worked as the designers of the Chronicle woodcuts, leaving the actual
cutting to other hands within the workshop; nonetheless, attribution will still
be made to Wolgemut, Pleydenwurff, and workshop.13
While it is believed that an earlier contract existed dating around November of
1487, the only surviving contract between artists and patrons dates to
December, 29, 1491, and describes in detail all duties for which the Wolgemut
and Pleydenwurff workshop would be responsible.14 In compliance with standard printing
practices during a time prior to copyright laws, Schreyer and Kammermeister
required that at least one of the two leading artists would be present during
the time of printing, an all-day affair, to prevent any mishaps in the printing
process, and as incentive, advanced their pay of one thousand Rhenish
guilders. The six hundred forty five
woodcuts would be stored in the publishing house of Koberger to inhibit acts of
stealing. Most importantly, before any
printing by Koberger began, the artists were obligated to present two complete
exemplar copies of the Chronicle, one
for the Latin language and the other for the German after it was translated,
which provided detailed layouts of each page, showing how the illustrations
would be integrated into the text.15

These
exemplars provide the key to acknowledging the extreme emphasis put upon the
illustrated aspect of the book; Schedel’s text and the woodcuts had to be fully
integrated amongst each other from the beginning stages of production. While many scholars debate about the hand who
made the sketches in the exemplar copies, what remains for us in the quest to
situate the book in its place as an object of art from Renaissance Nuremberg is
how the Exemplar copies exist as a whole:the text as well as the allotted space for images coincide between the
Exemplars and the finished printed versions of the Chronicle. 16 In addition, the artists must have formulated
the designs to be fully legible in black and white, acknowledging that not all
copies would be colored in the workshop or by another hand. Combining these notions and considering
Schedel’s proclamation of the narrative property of the illustrations and the
amount of preparation taken into both Latin and German editions, as proved by
the extant exemplar copies complete with graphite sketches depicting the
woodcut designs with great economy in line, the idea that the Chronicle was meant to be primarily
driven through its illustrations seems very likely and shall now serve as the
basis of this analysis.

PART
TWO: The Chronicle, Organizing the
Universe, and Locating Germany

Before
using cosmography and cosmology as a method of determining meaning in the Chronicle’s
imagery, it is required to preface that this topic is vastly complex, spans
several centuries of historiography and cultural consciousness, and in this
essay, will be utilized to serve the purpose of my limited study in
contextualizing the book’s imagery exclusively within the setting of
Renaissance Nuremberg. Therefore,
certain themes in cosmological thought will be examined, but other aspects should
be acknowledged in further exploration of this subject.

To begin, it remains commonplace
knowledge that the late fifteenth century marked the beginning of a new age of
discovery17. As a way of concisely displaying this newly
found information, scholars turned to the study of cosmography, that is to say
in general terms, the logistical mapping of the universe in an attempt to
comprehend its enormity as well as the earthly realm’s physical relation to the
heavenly realm. Cosmographer Peter
Apian, of the generation following the Nuremberg Chronicle, described
the discipline as such:

'Cosmography … is of the
world: which consists of the four
elements … as well as the sun, moon, and all the stars, and the description of
all that is covered by the vault of the sky… It proves according to
mathematical demonstrations. And it
differs from geography because it divides the land through the circles of the
sky, not through mountains, seas, and rivers, etc.’18

For these humanist
scientists, like Apian and Schedel, and patrician enthusiasts like Schreyer,
the mathematics and precision of cosmography allowed scholars to pinpoint their
positions in the universe as well as the position of Nuremberg relative to the
known and unknown worlds. More
appropriately for the Renaissance era, motifs within the cosmographic study
were applied to map-making as these new worlds were discovered, updating the
previously accepted Ptolemaic model.Consequently, maps and map-making offered a visual component to the
people in power of riches yet to be obtained.19 Thus, cosmography also served as an empirical
study because for Renaissance minds, the cosmos stayed constant while the earth
remained unpredictable and subject to permutation in its inherently imperfect
nature. This knowledge and calculation
of the universe, “… was valuable because it provided specific information about
the relationship (past, present, and future) between terrestrial and celestial
positions.”20 Cosmography encompassed geography, astronomy,
space, and time, which is why it appealed to writers of world chronicles, like
Schedel and his collaborative contemporaries who helped to compose the Nuremberg
Chronicle.

As one would expect, Schedel, with
his Christian mindset, begins his narrative of cosmogony, or the creation of
the cosmos, with the Old Testament account of Creation itself, dedicating the
preface to describing and illustrating the day by day process of how the world
came to be, establishing a Biblical basis for the whole historical
narrative. However, Schedel also makes
it apparent how ancient, and some pagan, sources have influenced the text; he
accrues his chronicle by compiling works of ancient authors like Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, and Pliny to fit his humanist agenda. The construction of the cosmos as detailed in
the Book of Genesis thoroughly lays the groundwork in its heptameral account
for the study of cosmography by providing a narrative component to universal
organization. Of the images included in
the Creation series of the Nuremberg
Chronicle, the Seventh Day is represented by the Wolgemut workshop with the
most detail and intricacy (fig. 3).

It
shows, in a nearly full-page woodcut, the Seventh
Day of Creation where, according to the text of the Chronicle,

…
having been accomplished by the divine wisdom in six days, and heaven and earth
having been finished, ordered and adorned, the glorious God fulfilled his task;
and on the seventh day he rested from his labors… not because he was wearied by
his labors, but to make a new and immortal creature or likeness out of matter;
for he never ceased in his own work of creation. And the lord blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, and called it the Sabbath, which according to the Hebrew tongue
means rest…21

In all its
components, the Seventh Day woodcut
illustrates the sum of the Christian universe according to these Scriptural
delineations set forth in Genesis, and are preceded by six other woodcuts which
gradually order the spheres of the cosmos, including the Platonic theory of the
four elements which combine to form, “… the heavenly bodies, earth, sun, moon
and stars, as well as all animals and plants…”22 The image begins with the central circle of
the earth itself, surrounded then in concentric circles of the other elements
(water, air, and fire, respectively), continuing with circles representing the
planets, then finally the fixed stars and the “'cristalline heavens,’” equaling
ten surrounding circles. The world continues
in its complexity by including a heavenly choir of angels who turn to God the
Father enthroned at the center, directly above the circles of the cosmos. In the four corners, the four cardinal winds
are depicted as personifications with delicately designed lines displaying
their directions.23 The woodcut attests to be all encompassing,
serves as the culmination of the six steps in God’s Creation, and relays the
earth’s location at the center in relation to the surrounding heavenly bodies. From this woodcut, one
concludes the continuation of ancient and medieval thought into the Renaissance
period that time and space had been predetermined and ordered by God to unfold
in a certain pattern, which was non-existent prior to God’s forming of the universe.24

Rather than attempting to identify
and deconstruct over one thousand years of accumulated Christian doctrine in
the woodcut, there lies more importance in situating the woodcut within the
context in which it was made and interpreted in Renaissance Nuremberg. The Seventh
Day of Creation woodcut shows a generalized and Christianized world-view
that posits Earth in the center according to Ptolemy and is typical of earlier conventions in
depicting the subject. The
earth’s circle, while smaller in scale, still remains in the center and serves
as the only known and feasibly explorable region within the cosmographic scope
that this map describes. By combining
multiple sources, it also serves to describe the mind-set of the Nuremberg humanist
interested in cosmography.

The
cosmographic motif continues through the Second Age with Schedel’s discussion
of Noah and the illustrations complementing the text (fig. 4).

Noah, the son of Lamech, and a lover of divine honor and of
justice, and possessed of ingenuity and perfection, found favor with the Lord;
for while men’s minds were bent upon evil, he always sought to influence them
to the pursuit of righteousness. And as the end of all flesh approached, the
Lord commanded Noah to build an ark of gopher wood… And although the flood
came, and the Lord destroyed all flesh, Noah and his people were saved… When
they came out of the ark they thanked God and made an altar and sacrificed to him.
(And God said) “This is the token of the covenant I give between me and you,
and to every creature.” The rainbow has two principal colors; some say six or
four. The watery one denotes the bygone flood; the fiery one, the future
judgment of fire. With the first, one should no longer concern himself, but
certainly wait for the other.25

In viewing the
folio, the reader finds the rainbow woodcut, which arches over the twelve
zodiac symbols reminiscent of the firmament level in the Seventh Day of Creation woodcut, distinctively inserted within the
text prior to God’s quotation, signifying to the reader that the arc is
synonymous with Noah’s own ark and embraces an affixed position in God’s
presupposition and future unraveling of the world.26 Because time is pre-constructed, the history
of events stands as predetermined as well, and these symbols work to both
foreshadow and recall events.

In her chapter “Centering the
Self: Mapping the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Limits of the World,” Stephanie Leitch
discusses the Ptolemaic model of the world map on folios XII verso and XIII
recto as Schedel’s ingenious reconciliation of Judeo-Christian Scriptures with
ancient cosmographical text in its simultaneous conveyance of contemporary
geographic knowledge and the Genesis narrative of the distribution of Noah’s
sons (figs. 5-6).27 While both strands of thought make efforts to
display the expanse of the known world, the map and how it would have applied
to the fifteenth century reader must be more closely observed and nuanced with
Ptolemaic theory. The map cut by the
Wolgemut workshop closely resembles the world map present in a copy of
Ptolemy’s Geographia, which was
printed in the 1480s in the German city of Ulm, the edition that Schedel kept
in his own library and may have circulated in the artists’ workshop.28 However, in a different text, Ptolemy more
thoroughly integrates the inherent relationship of astrology and geography in
an entirely cosmographic approach. In
Book Two of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos,
the astronomer relates individual countries of his known world to astrological
concepts, ultimately placing them within the boundaries of Aristotelian humoral
theory. The map, which in Wolgemut’s
depiction is displayed by the sons of Noah, is coincidentally divided by the book’s
binding so as to further isolate, “… the four triangular formations recognized
in the zodiac… north-western… south-eastern… north-eastern… [and]
south-western…” and dictate how the earth is divided into four hemispheres,
each with their own governing astrological signs and planets which then
describe the general countenance of their inhabitants.29

For
Ptolemy, the north-western sector, containing Europe (notably Germany) and
drawing its line at the modern conceptual border of the Orient, subsides under
the rule of Jupiter and Mars and fixed under Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius,
making these nations’ inhabitants, “… independent, liberty-loving, fond of
arms, industrious, very warlike, with qualities of leadership, cleanly, and
magnanimous.”30
Regarding the other areas of the map, their inhabitants retain less desirable
qualities like femininity, lasciviousness, and engage in bestiality and incest,
all which are an effect of their positioning and governance under the fixed
stars of the universe’s firmament level.31 Not coincidentally would a reader find on the
previous page fourteen illustrations made from two blocks of various monstrum. The
monsters flank a center column of text that speaks of the marginalized peoples
living at the outer-most ends of the world, places which are uninhabitable for
persons of balanced humor (fig. 7).

In
the beginning of the passage, Schedel specifically cites the works of Pliny,
Augustine, and Isidore of Seville in describing these races; however, it is
just to say that these so-called “monstrous races” have older origins and their
medieval revival by European scholars has served as a sort of impetus in
creating the larger “Western versus Other” narrative apparent in all aspects of
cross-cultural relations, and more prevalent during times of Western
exploration, the exact environment in which the Nuremberg Chronicle itself was produced.

Recalling
the First Age, Schedel writes about the Creation of Man, and exalts Adam as the
first son of God:

For God wonderfully ordered
all things and determined to build an eternal empire of countless and deathless
beings. And so he created a sensitive
and understanding likeness, in his own image, a being that could not be more
perfect… This animal we call Man is a circumspect, many-sided, keen being, full
of understanding and judgment, and born of the highest God alone. Among all species of life in nature, he alone
is endowed with that intelligence and reason which the lower creatures lack…
The earth, the elements, and the irrational animals willingly serve him.32

A close reading of
this text would acknowledge Schedel’s inherent bias as a product of his own
culture against those races, like the monstrum, which do not adhere to the
image of (the Western and Christian) Man’s perfection. Therefore, the mindset that any being who
does not necessarily resemble the European, whether it be through their humors
or their ancestral lineage from the Father of Europe Japheth, could be a derivative of these monstrum
residing in the inhabitable quarters of the world which, during the fifteenth
century, are becoming more reachable by German travelers.33

The ancient Roman author Pliny wrote in his encyclopedic and ethnographic work
Natural History that,

These
and similar varieties of the human race have been made by the ingenuity of
Nature as toys for herself and marvels for us.And indeed who could possibly recount the various things she does every
day and almost every hour? Let it
suffice for the disclosure of her power to have included whole races of mankind
among her marvels.34

Just as Pliny explained these
races as characters in Nature’s grand scene, Augustine adapted them into the
Noahic discourse, showing them as God’s playthings descended from Adam and
scattered across the world.35 Not only is their inclusion as an excerpt on
natural history and nature’s wonders important, but it is also the images’
proximity to the Ptolemaic map after Noah’s flood that assists in the full
construction of the Christianized world history narrative.

Once again, Stephanie Leitch remarks
upon the ability of the Wolgemut workshop to create visually descriptive,
naturalistic, and most importantly, dignified images of imagined monsters that
had been rampant in natural history texts, situating them in a believable space
comfortably on their own, and again geographically on the map, ultimately
reducing their character to pseudo-marginalia with no ethnographic motive.36 However, Leitch fails in this argument to
insert the Renaissance German man’s Eurocentric bias, which would impede their
view of these images as being merely descriptive. Additionally, they are not received within a
Noahic context in this analysis either.While Augustine himself rejected the idea that these portentous beings
were descended from Noah, he did confront the idea that they, like all men, are
descended from Adam and have been subject to the Second Age events, thus
dispersed and decentralized; their ancestry from Adam would explain their
Man-like qualities in the images. But by
continuing them on the edge of the map, folio XII verso, these monstrous races
are firstly placed near a Christian context, and secondly, illustrated in their
cosmographic place on the page. As
acknowledged before by the extent to which the Exemplar copies plan the
placement of each image with the text, their placement on the left side of the
folio physically forces the repositioning of the map, which could have been
extended to a full double page woodcut, into the position where the binding
reflects Ptolemy’s astrologic structural corners. Without the monsters’ existence on this page,
Europe would not be so clearly defined.Ptolemy’s ordering of the countries according to the stars, the diaspora
of Noah’s sons, and the designation of “us versus other” by these monstrous
races all coherently combine on these two pages to address the desire of the
Renaissance German man to not only situate his present state within the world,
but to trace his ancestry through the Noahic narrative. According to Tacitus’ Germania,
Noah’s mythical son Tuyscon (Tuisco) was responsible for naming the
Germans, “Deutsch” being derived from
“Teutsch,” so justly in this way, the German humanists associated themselves
with the Noahic narrative. 37 On the map, the perfectly balanced European
Germans do not exist on the same ground as Adam’s imperfect children.

Probably
not coincidentally, Schedel had kept inside his own copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle a woodcut map
designed by Erhard Etzlaub showing Nuremberg centrally positioned within a
circle and surrounded by neighboring cities, reminiscent of the spherical
motifs found in the Creation cycle of the Chronicle(fig. 8).

On its paired page, Schedel had written,
“Mistaken is the man who thinks that growth of countries could be best achieved
by more buildings and people.”38 During the late fifteenth century, Nuremberg,
as mentioned before, became a hub of intellectual and cultural exchange, and
was home to notable cosmographers such as Johannes Regiomontanus, Martin
Behaim, and Hieronymus Münzer.39 In connection to this, Schedel’s quote and
the Nuremberg map reveals his, and the intellectual community within the
city’s, mentality of Nuremberg as the nexus of culture and knowledge by
ultimately being able to produce and distribute in the portable form of a book
the most complete collection of historical events and cultural developments,
illustrated for the most diverse audience.Finally, to close this discussion, the elements of cosmography,
Scripture, chorography and humanist thought are carefully constructed within
the pages of the Ptolemy map and the Second Age chapter in order to justify the
German existence within God’s prefigured string of events.

PART THREE: The Chronicle,
Sanctifying Time, and Apocalyptic Anxieties of the New Millennium

In
the beginning of the chapter of the Seventh Age of the World, Schedel begins by
conflating the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Scripture by stating,

…
that which has a concrete and physical body must necessarily have an end, just
as it had a beginning… All things are considered mortal, whose parts or members
are mortal; and that which is born may perish.Everything that may be seen is corporeal, and (as Plato says) is subject
to dissolution.40

As previously stated, humans
have postulated eschatological thought since the birth of civilization, and the
Scriptures, as the one of the most complex texts in existence, does not make
easier the task of reducing the matter nor discussing it concisely. Therefore, certain aspects of the subject
will be utilized for the purpose of explaining the Nuremberg Chronicle’s subject matter specifically within the
chapters of Creation, the Second Age, and the Seventh Age. However, it shall be discussed not only
through certain passages in Schedel’s text, but also mostly through the book’s
imagery relative to cosmological interpretations of Noahic prophecy reflected
in the final chapter of the Chronicle.

In order to divulge the cosmological connotations of the
Book of Revelation, it is necessary to understand the importance of numbers,
and in particular, the number seven.Throughout the Book of Revelation, almost each chapter contains a
reference to the perfect number, for instance the seven seals, seven trumpets,
seven bowls, etc.; coincidentally, the number also represents the Seven Days of
Creation and the days of the week (the last one being the Sabbath), the Seven
Ages of the World, and the cosmologically ordered seven fixed planets, seven
heavens, and most importantly, seven years until the millennium.41 Stemming from ancient astronomical theories,
the number seven was perfect because it was the sum of the first odd and even
numbers, three and four. 42

As examined
previously, Noah’s story serves as a precursor to the eschaton of the Book of
Revelation. Throughout the Gospels, the
story of the Great Flood is consistently referred to as a symbol of rebirth, of
humanity destroyed and replenished by the grace of God himself, as if by
pressing a cosmic reset button. Very
generally speaking, time, and consequently history (the two are inextricably
connected and interchangeable), would resume for an undetermined period until
Judgment.43 Therefore, catastrophic events like the
Deluge and the Apocalypse are fixed in God’s pre-figured wordly order,
justifying their cosmological interpretation and representation in the Second
Age chapter.

When considering
the importance of the number seven with maintaining cosmic order, one observes
that the twelve astrological zodiac symbols found in the firmament sphere in
the Seventh Day of Creation woodcut correspond with the same zodiac
symbols shown under the Rainbow Covenant woodcut found on the same folio as the
building of Noah’s Ark in the Second Age. These astrological symbols of the zodiac are
related to the fixed stars’ constellations and the seven known planets and can
be connected to the Seventh Age apocalyptic chapter. In the Neo-Platonic translation by Marsilio
Ficino of the Corpus Hermeticum, a revivalist recount of mystical
hermetic thought produced in 1463, Ficino relays the concept of the soul’s
ascension.44 In general terms, the planets are
representative of the greater entity’s (God’s) system of rule and are
determinant of the world’s fate. Before
ascending into Heaven to join the heavenly choir led by God as seen in the Seventh
Day, the soul must pass through the seven spiritual levels of the planetary
spheres to obtain the level of God, then through the firmament level containing
the whole of planet and stars.46 Even more notably, the reappearance of the rainbow
motif in the Book of Revelation, where John envisioned God seated on a throne
surrounded by a rainbow, connects the promise of God preventing another
catastrophic destruction of the world with the vision of God in Heaven during
the end of days after the apocalyptic events.47 In essence, these woodcut illustrations use
the astrological symbols of the zodiac and planets to guide the reader through
Schedel’s text, thus creating and illustrating a predetermined metahistory of
human fate which culminates in the transformation into an inhuman entity;
additionally, this corresponds with the typical model of the seven day week and
proving the, “… Christian view that mankind was passing through a series of
pedagogical stages under Divine guidance…,” just as the celestial bodies of the
universe move in fixed cosmic orbits.48 At this period, hermetic texts regained
popularity and were widely distributed, as was the case with Johannes
Lichtenberger’s Prognosticatio, which
combined hermeticism, astrology, and sibyllic prophecy in a collection of
prognostications published with permission in the court of Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick III.49

The beginning of
the Seventh Age chapter, Schedel specifically notes the book’s publication in
1493 during the seventh year of the reign of Maximilian I. The work of Jeffrey Ashcroft relays best my
own postulations that given the brevity and size of the images in this chapter
and the reference to Maximilian’s reign as Holy Roman Emperor rather than King
of the Romans, the title he held while ruling jointly with his father Frederick
III, the Seventh Age could have been written closer to the time of publication.50 Indeed, Maximilian assumed the title of
Emperor upon his father’s death in 1493.Ashcroft proposes that Schedel had conjectured Frederick’s eminent death
and formulated his text in a way that illustrates his son Maximilian in the
guise of the medieval Last Emperor trope, whom in Revelation, rules alongside
Jesus during Satan’s imprisonment and assists in restoring Christendom to its
former glory.51 Additionally, the approaching Turkish armies
produced an anxiety within the empire of the imposing threat of Islam on
Christianity.52 For the Germans, Maximilian was the only hope
for restoring the empire back to the glory of the Romans and leading the
populace into the age of the end of days.

The element of time is even further prophesied in the Book of Revelation in the verse which
describes the period after the persecution of the Antichrist. In Revelation 20, the archangel Michael in
Hell chains Satan for one thousand years, during which Christ rules peacefully
over the world. After the one thousand
years comes to an end, Satan is released and defeated by Christ in a cosmic
battle, ushering in the Day of Judgment, where God separates the souls and
determines their fate.53 Drawn from the text, popular belief held that
apocalyptic events would occur in intervals of one thousand years, where either
before or after the thousand years, the Second Coming of Christ would restore
order to the universe, overturning history; such is a very general basis for
millennialist thinking.54 Prior to the fifteenth century, inauspicious
events led to the belief that Europeans were living in the period of the
Antichrist, symbolized in the form of the bubonic plague which erased nearly
half of the population, the Hundred Years’ War, and widespread famine which
devastated the continent well into the fifteenth century.55 As if replaying the events of the Great
Flood, the Black Death nearly eliminated the population of Europe and finds
itself referenced in the narrative of Revelation, further contributing to
millennial anxieties of a cataclysmic end.

Schedel’s analysis
of the Seventh Age of the World does not adhere stringently to the Book of
Revelation, but more laconically reduces the material to the most important
events, and his construction of this last chapter begins with the Coming of the
Antichrist, followed by Death, and finally ends with the Last Judgment. Therefore, the last chapter of the Nuremberg
Chronicle should not be considered a transposition of the Book of Revelation
itself because the exact events are not described, but rather a paraphrase of
the eschatological prophecies held in the Revelation text. Therefore, it should more correctly be
referred to as having millennialist tendencies rather than apocalyptic.

While the text prepares the reader with an outline of events without
allusions to any specific points within the Revelations text admitting
millenarian anxieties, the images of the Seventh Age chapter speak much more to
the viewers’ perceptions of the present cosmic order and future of things. For the Seventh Age, the Wolgemut workshop
completed three full-page woodcuts depicting The Coming of the Antichrist(fig. 9),

the Dance of Death, and the Last Judgment. Unlike the images discussed
previously which deal with Creation and the Second Age events, these images
bear no distinct or discernible signs of astrological thought; however, it is
with their scale and conventionally depicted subject matter which offer a
glimpse into a larger , universal realm.

In the Coming
of the Antichrist woodcut, Wolgemut depicts three different
narratives: the Antichrist entering the
earthly realm, the False Prophet preaching, and Christ preaching to the
public. In the image, a period of four
and a half years has unfolded and the emphasis on earthly notions of time give
way to understanding God’s prefiguration of the end of days, according to
Schedel’s text. The Dance of Death
woodcut seems out of place; however, when synthesized with the cultural climate
leading to fifteenth century millennial thought, the image of four skeletal
beings dancing around another skeleton rests into a grave is an allegory of the
bubonic plague and a blatant image of mortality, that death is preeminent,
predetermined by God, and looming over the entire population who awaits for the
Revelatory events to unfold as history has dictated (fig. 10).

The final image of the Last Judgment
is represented by typical conventions where Christ hovers above a cacophony of
risen souls who on his right side enter into the new Kingdom of Heaven and on
his left side are pulled into Hell by demonic monsters. Christ rests on an earthly disc reminiscent
of the center terra of God’s universe during Creation and is flanked by the
Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist (fig. 11).

Because
these images adhere to typical conventions, it is more important to discuss
their placement within the book to understand their importance within the
context of a world chronicle. As
full-page woodcuts, the Seventh Age images take full advantage of the Chronicle’s characteristics as a
book. Unlike any other form of art,
books carry a potency that is derived from their portability. To be able to hold the world in one’s own
hands lends the reader the power to observe and study from history as he
pleases. Because of this interactivity,
images within books possess an affective quality because the viewer is allowed
to peruse them as closely as he desires.For the viewer of the Nuremberg
Chronicle, reading the last chapter would have given the sensation of one’s own mortality when faced with the
apocalyptic imagery, that what has a beginning must have an end and God’s plan
as governed by the fixed cosmos is unchangeable and must be faced. By ending the chronicle with a full page
woodcut of the Last Judgment, readers
find in the image the unavoidable end of days and are forced into contemplation
about their own eternal salvation or damnation.

It has been established in this essay that the
concept of time and history are interchangeable and created only after God has
rest from creating the universe, thus acknowledging the prearrangement of
beginning through end in a series of linked and repetitive events. While “reading” these images so to speak, the
intended audience, the educated German man interested in the development and
stabilizing of the German culture and intellect, would be able to discern these
patterns through the artist workshop’s intentional inclusion of cosmographic
motifs, which link together Creation and Noah’s prophecy. Thus, the history held in the Scripture would
have told him that another cataclysmic event was forthcoming in an effort to
restore God’s cosmic order during a time of discovery and simultaneous hardship
which imposed upon German, more largely European, power. In essence, these seemingly disconnected
strings of events culminate in millennialist thought which sought to assign
dates to the final Apocalypse, long overdue.Through the complexities of humanist thought, conflation of ancient
sources with modern innovations, and growing concerns of God’s universe out of
balance, the Nuremberg Chronicle and
its images give viewers the opportunity to observe in their own hands the past,
present, and future of humanity at large.

CONCLUSION

It has been this essay’s purpose to expand upon the scholarship of the Nuremberg Chronicle, which has grown to become significantly
displaced from its context as a world chronicle of a Biblical basis. Several scholars have focused on the place
that the Nuremberg Chronicle holds
within early printing houses and the business of making books prior to the turn
of the sixteenth century. Additionally,
scholars have fixated their attention to a wide variety of issues brought about
by the book: the supposed involvement of
Albrecht Dürer in creating the woodcuts, the influence of geography and map-making
in the cityscape woodcuts, etc.56 This essay has chosen to focus only on the
unique woodcuts of the Creation cycle, Noah’s Ark, and the
Seventh Age in an effort to create a visual connection between millennialist,
apocalyptic thought and Noahic prophecy by synthesizing image with various
texts. With further scholarship, it is
my hope that these connections will be further elucidated and that through our understanding
of the Nuremberg Chronicle, we will recognize it as a monument of artistic historiography.

Johnson, Christine R. The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters With the Strange and Marvelous. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

Leitch, Stephanie. “Centering the Self: Mapping the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Limits of the World.” InMapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.